Cambridge Analytica + Psyops + The Beast

firefinga

Well-known member
On the topic: Methinks, the only thing that will stick is the data-theft. Whether they successfully influenced the election in Trumps favor we will never know. With the narrow outcome, it seems plausible. That said, FB sucks by itself on so many levels without CA already. They censor and delete accounts and groups critical to those in power due to political pressure or orchestrated actions by (mostly right wing or religious zealots) "online vigilantes" etc. They evade taxes and so on and so forth. I say fuck'em. Unfortunately, FB has become the "internet standard", and whatsapp is possibly their greatest asset these days.
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses

This seems absolutely key to the whole story and is a kinda red thread linking so many different disparate strands across a wide range of areas - Trump, Syria, Brexit, god knows what else:

They were running ads disguised as news stories, linked to fake news sites + stories, and targeting along the lines of "this person is located in this key voting district, has $17 in their bank account, is paranoid, has used the word n***er in their private FB messages,
 
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vimothy

yurp

idk whether they'd know all this stuff (did the API return friends' private messages?), but on some level this just is targeted marketing, the basis for the modern web. everyone does it - including the obama campaign, who did it on a much bigger scale.
 

droid

Well-known member
DZXOKZ7WsAEYQv6.jpg
 

firefinga

Well-known member
March 2018 wasn't a great month for the IT-behemoths. FB-Datascandal, the "autonomous" Uber car killing a person.
 

vimothy

yurp
another analysis proving that I'm right about the cambridge analytica scandal: http://blogs.harvard.edu/doc/2018/03/23/nothing/

one of the (kind of obvious when you think about it) things it points out is that the newspapers reporting on it are doing the exact same thing they're accusing CA / FB of -- selling your data to unknown entities for unknown purposes -- including on articles *about* cambridge analytica:

Let’s start with Facebook’s Surveillance Machine, by Zeynep Tufekci in last Monday’s New York Times. Among other things (all correct), Zeynep explains that “Facebook makes money, in other words, by profiling us and then selling our attention to advertisers, political actors and others. These are Facebook’s true customers, whom it works hard to please.”

Irony Alert: the same is true for the Times, along with every other publication that lives off adtech: tracking-based advertising. These pubs don’t just open the kimonos of their readers. They bring people’s bare digital necks to vampires ravenous for the blood of personal data, all for the purpose of returning “interest-based” advertising to those same people.

With no control by readers (beyond tracking protection which relatively few know how to use, and for which there is no one approach or experience), and damn little care or control by the publishers who bare those readers’ necks, who knows what the hell actually happens to the data? No one entity, that’s for sure.

...

The same irony applies to countless other correct and important reporting on the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica mess by other writers and pubs. Take, for example, Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, and the Revelations of Open Secrets, by Sue Halpern in yesterday’s New Yorker. Here’s what RedMorph shows going on behind that piece:

Screen-Shot-2018-03-23-at-11.39.19-AM.png
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
another analysis proving that I'm right about the cambridge analytica scandal: http://blogs.harvard.edu/doc/2018/03/23/nothing/

one of the (kind of obvious when you think about it) things it points out is that the newspapers reporting on it are doing the exact same thing they're accusing CA / FB of -- selling your data to unknown entities for unknown purposes -- including on articles *about* cambridge analytica:

Sorry, but the cartoon on that page is brilliant:

vampire-personal-data_250px.jpg

Steve Bell must be shitting himself!
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
The list of friends' info that 'data developers' would have had access to seems to be:

About me
Actions
Activities
Birthday
Check-ins
Education history
Events
Games activity
Groups
Hometown
Interests
Likes
Location
Notes
Online presence
Photo and video tags
Photos
Questions
Relationship details
Relationships
Religion
Politics
Status
Subscriptions
Website
Work history

A lot of info for sure, but it doesn't seem as if the contents of private conversations were available. And do people really put a lot of their work history up on Fb?It doesn't necessarily seem that (going from the Twitter feed that Danny linked to) the financial circumstances of users would necessarily have been available to CA etc, unless I'm missing something.

Also, if the whole CA operation depended upon targeting 70,000 or so people in swing states, then the bigger obvious problem - as with the shock Tory 'landslide' in 2015, widely credited to Lynton Crosby's relentless focus on marginals - is that the electoral systems here and particularly in the States, are susceptible to being mainipulated by targeting relatively few people.

Edit: Following on from what Vimothy said, an article on the Obama campaign's Project Narwhal in 2012, and the leap made between 2008 and 2012: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...aign_program_could_change_the_2012_race_.html
"(in 2008) Obama campaign staffers were exasperated at what seemed like a basic system failure: They had records on 170 million potential voters, 13 million online supporters, 3 million campaign donors and at least as many volunteers—but no way of knowing who among them were the same people."
 
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droid

Well-known member
Incidentally, we're having our own mini-Trump/Brexit data scandal at the moment.

Millions are pouring into digital ad campaigns in an attempt to sway the abortion referendum, some involving CA type groups. This is an extension of the decades long support for regressive church PR groups from US fundamentalist and conservative orgs. They did the same with the gay marriage vote a couple of years back. There's also people like the Center for bioethical reform whose foreign activists are picketing hospitals with obscene abortion imagery - in turn being challenged by a radical queer group covering up their signage.

The fear now is that the spend is easily 10-1 against the repeal side and might sway some undecideds. The repeal side are running a large scale donation funded grassroots campaign but just cant compete with the influx of foreign cash.

Facebook have just announced they will no longer accept foreign funded ads, but with the caveat that these must be user reported. An attempt to stymie legislative changes as changes in Irish law affects a large cohort of FB users.
 

droid

Well-known member
Google has just banned ALL advertising related to the referendum.

They are really desperate to avoid regulation.
 

droid

Well-known member
This is a pretty huge deal. The no campaign is in tatters now. Historically they've depended disproportionately on US fundie cash which has flooded in during various referenda. They were counting on the massive disparity in spending power plus dirty data and online tactics to swing the undecideds, and now they're fucked. Potential implications for US mid terms and other political campaigns with heavy online spends as well.
 
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